


I'm Found in the Water

by CarelessWithYourHeart



Category: Fringe (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27933250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarelessWithYourHeart/pseuds/CarelessWithYourHeart
Summary: AU: Peter was never brought to our side as a boy and grows up very differently on the other side. He's a con, a shameless libertine, a jet-setting, nomadic despot—restless, jaded, always searching. The drugs and the drinking and the women aren't enough to block out the dreams that haunt him.Olivia, having come into her power as a child, now controls it (in secret) as an adult. Her role in Fringe division is all-consuming, and she sleeps very little, plagued by vivid night visions of a man with electric-blue eyes...who whispers that he loves her.When cracks in both their universes start appearing around Reidan Lake, the Walters discover that the solution somehow involves Peter, who's lost in a far-flung corner of the world. And there's only one FBI agent good enough to track him down.Features: Dark!Peter, who's kind of a jerk, Olivia being a stone-cold BAMF, Naughty dreams, Slow burn, Loose canon (see what I did there?), and two Walters' worth of fun.
Relationships: Peter Bishop/Olivia Dunham
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22





	1. Alone in the Deep

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, Fringe fam! I'm so thrilled to join you all. I'm a longtime fic reader, but now I'm jumping to the writer's side. Though this will be a plot-centric AU, I've rated it M for now, but might change to E for later chapters, since I know they'll be scenes of violence (of the bad-guy-fighty type), gore/squeamish stuff (probably bad guy guts or characters getting scienced on or patched up), and really detailed sexytimes. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and I welcome reviews/thoughts as you read. 
> 
> As you all know, I own nothing, I'm just moving these imaginary people around in an imaginary world, while imagining all the fun they could get up to.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter never sleeps alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter:  
> Halsey  
> "Ghost"  
> https://youtu.be/iQFKgPBtYdc

[ ](https://ibb.co/ydY0DrS)

Erbil, Kurdistan  
Sunday Morning, 2:00 a.m.

Peter’s skin is on fire. Not the pleasurable, touch-of-a-lover kind of fire, but the exotic-ants-and-fever fire that he remembers from childhood—scalding and torturous, still vivid in his mind nearly thirty years later. The fire burns in a way that makes his mind white out. But he can’t move, can’t search for relief, can’t do anything but let his head loll back against the soft upholstery behind him. Everything in him regrets the decision he’d made just an hour ago.

The air around him is thick with smoke—so thick, in fact, that Peter has to squint to see the young woman passed out next to him on the dark, velvet settee. It could be that the squint is also an attempt to try and focus his reeling head, to bring down the speed of the spinning room. He isn’t quite sure which reason causes him to lurch in his less-than-sober state, only that he’s suddenly turned his head and squinted. The room slows, a bit. The girl becomes a less-hazy outline.

He can’t remember her name, but he can recall that, after they’d met in the bar at his upscale hotel, she’d led him here in exchange for an absurdly low sum in American dollars and his promise that he would pay for the night’s party favors. He’d thought she meant drinks, maybe a joint or two, after which he could stumble back to his hotel and pass out—hoping against all odds to sleep a dreamless sleep.

 _This is the best club in Erbil,_ she had said. _Very exclusive._

After Peter had spent an hour lounging on the very settee he now found himself unable to get up from, drinking strong, anise-scented arak and smoking honey-soaked tobacco from a tall, ornate hookah, a man had walked by them, speaking low, rushed Arabic to the girl before disappearing into the shadows of the club. The girl—Peter now remembered that her name was Amira—had leaned over Peter, a knee on either side of his hips, her dark eyes distant and glassy with liquor. He’d thought for a moment that she was going to kiss him, and he’d put his hands up to cup her shoulders, his pulse kicking up despite the fact that he was blitzed-out-of-his-mind drunk.

She was beautiful, curvy, with dark hair and red-stained lips, and those lips had hovered over his, so close that he’d been able to smell the arak’s licorice perfume on her breath.

“Pay him,” she’d whispered, the words gliding out of her mouth to traverse the hot, dry air between them.

He’d licked his lips, causing her to draw back slightly. “What?” he’d rasped. Was she asking him to _pay_ for her company? In all his years of using his father’s money to escape, he’d never paid for sex. The thought that he might have stupidly gotten himself into a situation where he’d have to decline this girl’s services irked him. He considered himself savvier than that.

 _Maybe it’s lack of sleep. Eating up all those big, beautiful brain cells._ It was true, in part. The IQ that his father was so proud to have passed on didn’t function well on two hours a night of fitful rest.

“He has DMT,” the girl had explained, sitting back so that she could cup Peter’s jaw. “Do you know what that is?”

He’d shaken his head. In the soft haze of his intoxication, starting to tire, he’d tipped his face to the side to rest more heavily into one of her palms. She’d slapped him lightly on the cheek, which had startled him momentarily half-sober. He’d batted her hands away and rubbed his own palm against one stubbled cheek, glowering.

Her laugh, low and promising, turned out to have nothing to do with sex. “It’s a drug, pretty boy. It lets you choose your dreams.”

His fingers had stilled against his jaw, and his breath had caught. “Choose? How?”

_Could he somehow choose to not see **her**?_

Could he choose not to wake tangled in empty sheets, arching blindly into the imagined silk of long, lithe legs? Choose not to wake reaching for the ghost with wide green eyes who had haunted him now for what seemed a lifetime?

The ghost knew his name. She whispered it across his skin and into his open mouth, and she followed the two syllables with fingertips he could almost—almost—feel and taste, if he was caught in just the right place between conscious and not.

Amira had shrugged, rocking back to settle on his knees. “I don’t know the magic. Only the magician.” Peter had followed the toss of her delicate chin to where the mystery man sat, just across the room.

“How much?” Not that he'd cared. It was Walter’s money. He'd just needed to know how much cash to untuck from his wallet to regain control of his dreams. Because he needed the damned ghost girl out of his head.

Amira had named a price that he'd suspected was double the going rate. That was okay. Peter was often on the take, too, even if it was just for the thrill of things. Peter had handed the cash over and watched his temporary friend as she’d disappeared into the smoke.

She’d come back with a small baggie and a big smile.

That had been an hour ago.

Now, Peter sits in the redolent air, and the fire will not go away.

He lets his eyes slip closed, willing his breathing to slow, balling his fists against the crawl of heat over his chest, his neck, his cheeks. Every breath gets harder and harder to draw.

Suddenly, relief floods him. There's a brush of cold against his forehead, and then the press of a palm that spreads the chill down both of his cheeks.

“Peter,” she says. The voice is not Amira's.

 _Oh, it's the ghost. Fuck this drug._ It was only making her realer, adding insult to injury against his fever-ridden flesh.

“No,” he groans. “Go away. Let me sleep.”

“Peter, open your eyes.”

The blessed respite of the fingertips against his throat makes the fever retreat briefly—Peter imagines it as the same sensation as falling through thin winter ice into the clear, startling cold that lays below. His eyes fly open.

The ghost kneels in front of him. Her wide, plush mouth, the one that he's plundered in endless loops in his own private hell, is pinched in a tight line. Her brow is furrowed. He can see the worry in her startlingly verdant gaze.

And in that moment, it comes to him, inexplicably. The name of the ghost, which he’d never known before this very moment. It comes out on a rushed breath, and he reaches up to grip her hands, which are still at the open neck of his shirt.

“Olivia.”

"Peter, you have to come with me to Reidan Lake."

Beneath his grip, she's solid. He doesn’t know how it's possible, but his ghost…she's _real._


	2. Treading Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olivia finds herself lost in a strange place, in the company of a very inebriated other-side Peter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Chapter:  
> Marianas Trench, "Echoes of You."  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnga-lHd0vM
> 
> Feed the author: reviews are yummy! <3

  
  


Olivia knows that, in order to find Peter’s hotel, she needs to think fast. He's already practically incoherent, unable to tell her which direction his hotel is in—he's headed for a hard crash, and _soon_. So, she needs a plan and some luck. The keycard that she finds in his wallet is a simple matte- gold, magnet-striped rectangle, with only a sleek, black logo in the shape of a crown occupying one front corner. No name. No address. No telephone number. No indication of the room it opens. 

Exiting the club where she’d found the object of her mission sprawled on a velvet couch and reeking of liquor and discontent, she tows him into the cold like a mother tows a bad child out of a toy store. He seems amused by her, but she’s been warned that his moods can change on a dime. Did they even have dimes on this side?

Olivia unearths her phone from her back pocket. This is a feat, considering she's using one arm to steady the swaying weight of a full-grown man. She finds the device dead.

 _Shit._ Olivia remembers that, during the op briefing, Astrid had stressed the possibility that her cell phone might not even work on this side, but _hearing_ that tidbit and actually _knowing_ that her recent jump had put her completely out of communication are two separate things. The first is just another piece of information to file away in her brain, which is already too full of the myriad things that could go horribly wrong on this trip. And the second—that she is flying absolutely blind and without backup —is a slap of reality that she isn’t sure she needs at the moment.

She and reality haven’t been on the best of terms lately, anyway.

One of the things that she _can_ acknowledge as real right now—Peter’s tall, solid nearness, his warm breath at her neck as he leans drunkenly into her and whispers nonsense into her hair—is another thing she shouldn’t, _will not_ think about. It's hard enough believing that he's corporeal. That her fingers don’t pass through him as she grips the waist that she’s been ephemerally skin-to-skin with in countless dirty dreams.

She feels her face heat despite the outside temperature. She knows from her conversations with Secretary Bishop that his son is something of a lothario, but Peter’s proximity—coupled with the fact that Olivia’s, ahem, _connection_ to Peter is through a cyclical series of rather explicit night visions, well, it almost has her convinced that the younger Bishop isn’t acting on his normal proclivities, and instead somehow knows about all the scenarios she’s dreamt of him in. Stranger things have happened in her tenure with Fringe division.

He leans into her again, wobbly on his feet.

“…understand how you smell so _damned good_. Olivia. Oh-lihhh-vee-ahhhhhh…” His sigh at the end of her drawn-out name is soft, sonorous, and way too intimate, as though he's remembering something heady and deeply satisfying. She has to admit that she’s never had someone sigh after saying her name like they’ve just pushed back from the table at a Roman banquet. And after discovering that the Peter in her dreams and the Peter of the real world have the same boyish features, the same intense eyes as blue as the center of a flame…well, a little part of her thrills at the way her name rolls out of his mouth and into the chill, his breath making clouds in the dark November air.

“Copper. Copper burns blue,” he says, startling her. Then, he chuckles darkly and speaks to no one in particular, staring off in to the ether. “Not a copper. FBI? Shiny badge, so pretty. Gold. Like the gold clasp at the back of that dress. It was so hard to open, but the way your _skin felt_ …”

He breaks off, his eyelids fluttering down as he sags against her.

“No, no, Peter, wake up.” She manages to jostle him enough to make him open his eyes again. He seems to regain his knees, and he straightens.

He narrows his eyes at her, frowning. “Concentrate and ask again.”

“Where is your hotel, Peter?”

“Oooh, ’s cold,” Peter croons, reeling back. "Lake water's so cold, 'Livia. We can't go. No, no." Olivia grips him as tightly as she can and scans the deserted street in front of them. It's past the time when typical bars close, and so there are no taxis waiting at the curb to whisk tipsy fares away.

_Double shit. Maybe Peter has a…_

Olivia begins to rummage in the pockets of his coat. When she finds no phone in the outside pockets, she lets go of him with her bracing arm and quickly undoes the buttons that hold the soft wool together at the front, sliding her hands inside both sides of the slick, satin interior to feel for inner pockets.

“Hey, hey, hey! I’m not that kinda boy,” he slurs as her fingers grazed down the fabric covering his ribs to skim the waistband of his dark jeans. Nothing in either front jeans pocket. Damn.

Patting at the lining of his outerwear, she feels the shape of his phone and worms her fingers into the front left pocket inside his jacket. Before she can pull the device free, his hands are at her hips, pulling her into the warm space between the separate sides of his coat. Her free hand, the one not gripping his phone, is trapped between their bodies. He's hot—burning up, in fact. She isn’t sure what he's on, or under the influence of, but the sheen of sweat on his forehead tells her something isn’t right.

“Unless I _am_ that kind of boy.” His voice is as rough as his cheek as he dips his head to rub one stubble-covered curve against the side of her face. The words pour hotly into her ear.

A plan occurs to her.

“Yeah?” she asks, tilting her head back to look at him. He’s straightened, and the grin on his face is one of cocky self-assurance, though his eyes can’t seem to focus long enough for the swagger to really make an impact. “You’re the kind of boy who, what? Lets a woman take the lead?”

He focuses on her for a moment, a crease appearing between his brows. “Well, yeah. If it…I mean…we could…” The sloppy grin returns.

Olivia presses into him. “I could take you anywhere?”

His eyes dilate further, the blue nearly lost in the blown-black centers. “God, yes.”

Olivia rises up on tiptoe and puts _her_ lips next to _his_ ear. “How about your hotel room?”

His cheek is against hers again, only this time he lowers his chin and ghosts his mouth over her pulse point. “Now?”

“Now,” she asserts, taking advantage of a slight space that gaps between them, slipping his phone free and into the back pocket of her jeans. “But a girl likes to know where she’s spending the night.”

He opens his mouth over the spot where her jaw meets her neck and scrapes his front teeth lightly there. She has to remind herself that this is a mission—and not her own seat at the banquet.

“The Monarch,” he says, clearing his throat. “Room 6995.”

Then, he slides away from her, his broad, warm hands leaving her hips—and promptly passes out onto the freezing concrete. As Olivia hits her knees beside him on the sidewalk, a light, cold rain begins to fall.

“Damn it,” she mutters, reaching around the back of Peter’s head to feel if he’d struck it. Looking down at him, she purses her lips and reaches for his phone, which is still nestled in her back pocket. “How the hell am I supposed to get us there?”


	3. Undertow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter wakes to unexpected company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, all! <3 
> 
> This chapter: Silhouette by Jacob Lee  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnizSKeeEt0

He's dead—no, he's _dying_.

Peter opens his eyes the barest sliver, shutting them quickly when the minute amount of light that slips through sends hot daggers into his skull. He can feel the hair at the back of his head, damp with sweat, sticking to his neck. The rich, expensive smell of the detergent that's been used on the cool, silk sheets beneath his fingertips tells him that he's back in his bed at the Monarch. Well, if he has to die, at least he'll do it in a hotel room that costs enough credits per night to solidly piss off his father. He takes a slow, shaky breath and lets his head sink deeper into the pillow.

How had he gotten back here from the club?

He wiggles his feet. No shoes or socks. In fact, he realizes—as he brings himself up to his elbows and the bedcovers slide down his torso—that he is undressed completely, aside from his boxers. The room’s freezing air makes his skin run with goosebumps. He thinks immediately about the wallet that had been in his back jeans pocket. It might be somewhere in the room, or he might have gotten rolled for it at the club. The way his head feels, it could go either way.

Peter chances opening his eyes again, millimeter by millimeter, his stomach rolling. He doesn't even want to think about the hassle of replacing his fake iDent and the heavily loaded Altcoin card that matched his Erbil alias. In painstaking degrees, the far wall of his room comes into blurry view.

_God, how much did you drink last night, you royal fucking idiot?_

It's the same admonition he gives himself on every one of his morning-afters. Except, this time, he hasn’t startled awake in the middle of a sweaty, detail-rich sex dream starring his mystery mistress. He’s woken naturally—if you can call the pain he's currently in _natural_. Does that mean he slept?

Peter brings his left arm up in front of him, close to his face. The sleek vital tracker is still strapped around his wrist. All he has to do is find his phone and get the sleep stats from the previous night. Then, he'll know if there's something in his new surroundings—maybe in the drug that Amira gave him—that's helped exorcise his ghost.

He swallows weakly past the painful dryness in his throat. He isn’t sure if he can even sit up further without puking. But he can’t stay in bed all day—he desperately needs water, needs a shower, needs to pee. Determined to get his feet on the floor, Peter flings out a hand to grope for some purchase on the mattress.

His hand grazes the warm softness of another body.

Peter jerks his fingers back, curling his hand into a loose fist against his chest and whipping his head to the left. _Big mistake._ As he takes note of the spill of flaxen hair that fans out on the other pillow, the room swims, and black dots dance in front of his eyes. He tips sideways toward whoever the hell is in his bed, praying that, if he's about to pass out, he will at least not be sick at the same time. His luck holds. He catches himself on an elbow and blessedly doesn’t go full _Exorcist_. But his string of curses is loud enough that the woman with her back to him—who is sleeping on top of every cover on the bed, fully clothed—stirs.

A wave of scent—over and above the smell of the sheets—washes over him. It is light, sweet, and makes him think of wildflowers and the crisp, watery edge that the warmth of summer grants to lake water.

His voice is hoarse as he croaks out her name, events of the previous night coming back to him in a cascade of jerky snippets. “Olivia?”

She is up so fast that he doesn't have time to say anything else. A split second after she leaves his bed, he finds himself facing the barrel of a rather hefty Glock.

He puts his hands out, fingers wide. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Are you fucking kidding me? Put the gun _down_.”

Their eyes lock momentarily. She is breathing heavily, and from the way that she keeps breaking gaze to look around the room, he can tell that she's unsure of her surroundings. He purposefully softens his tone of voice, knowing that she is likely as disoriented as he’d been when he’d woken up.

“Hey, it’s okay. We’re at the Monarch, remember? I think—I think you got me here last night, somehow. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

He lowers his hands, and, thankfully, her gun hand falters slightly. She licks her lips, and the Glock begins to lower.

Even in the face of mortal danger, he is struck just a little breathless by how beautiful she is. In his dreams, he’s seen her in lovely, gossamer pieces—her lips, her eyes, the satiny bend of her knee as he hitches it over his shoulder. But put together and standing in front of him, even waving a gun in his face, the whole of her is breathtaking.

“S—sorry. I, uh, I’m not used to waking up on this side.”

“Side…of the bed?” He frowns.

She shakes her head. “I can’t explain right now.” She checks her wrist, where a watch similar to his tracker sits. “We have to go. Can you get up?”

He sees the shift as she switches from out-of-sorts and uncertain into whatever gear she's now in. He guesses cop, or soldier, though she doesn’t seem the Ground Force type. Maybe Air Command? Her size is about right for a pilot.

“I’m not going _anywhere_ until I get some answers.” He throws the blankets off and swings his legs out of bed, pushing past the vertigo that threatens as he stands. “And let’s start with these few— _who_ the hell are you, _how_ the hell did we get from that nightclub back to my room, and _why_ the hell is it so damned cold in here?”

She holsters her gun in a side holster. Peter pauses, considering that it's probably loaded, and that she’s slept with it holstered next to him for at least the past few hours. That has to say something about what's going on. None of his previous one-night stands had slept with a firearm at the ready.

She crosses her arms. “I got your room location from you before you passed out outside the club last night. Well, this morning, really.”

_So that's why my head feels like a failed middle-school egg-drop project._

He reaches up and feels the back of his head, wincing when his fingers hit a fair-sized bump beneath the hair at his crown. The skin is unbroken, however, so at least there's that.

She averts her eyes as he drops his arm, and he realizes that he is standing there in nothing but his underwear. For a brief flash, he considers finding his clothes. But she had to have been the one who undressed him, and so until he gets some answers, he doesn't give two shits if she's uncomfortable with his state of dress.

She swallows and goes on. “I used your phone to call the hotel, and they sent a car service. I was surprised, at that time of night…”

“It’s the most expensive hotel in Erbil,” he explains.

Those shaded-jade eyes slide around the room again. “I can tell.” He has to forcibly clear the image from his mind of those eyes half-closed in pleasure.

 _Get it together, Bishop, you creep._ He’s never done those things with this woman—though it's a complete mindfuck as to how the hell she's standing here in front of him, a manifested dream.

Then, after a beat, she says, “Anyway, one of the baggage people helped me get you up to the room. You were running a dangerously high fever, and so I took your clothes off and kept the room as cold as possible. I would have done more, but I wasn’t sure what you’d taken—”

“Something that was supposed to help me sleep.” He manages a laugh, overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all. “Look, I’ve got to hit the head, so let’s press pause on this circus for just a tick, yeah?”

She nods, and he goes as quickly as his wobbly legs will carry him to the bathroom, where he manages to stand through the necessities, as well as through a brief shower. He cups his hand under the first streams that run from the showerhead, collecting a palmful of blessedly ice-cold water to swallow down a quartet of pain pills. He hadn’t said that he was going to shower, but as the soon-hot needles of water drum into his sore shoulders and back, he thinks, _Fuck it. She can wait._

He exits twenty minutes later—according to his wrist tracker—to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, lacing up a pair of heavy, black books.

“Where did you say my clothes were?”

She gestures to the dresser in the corner by the bathroom door. He’d walked right by.

“Can I get dressed, or is that going to spook you? I don't want to get shot on top of being hungover.”

She nods, and he tightens the towel around his waist and makes his way to the neat stack of his belongings. There's a water bottle sitting next to his clothes, still cold, and he can only assume she’d placed it there from the minibar. He makes short work of it.

Peter is relieved to find his wallet sitting next to his clothes and phone, and he flips the bifold open to find the iDent and Altcoin card still in place. All of his cash is gone. He cuts his eyes over to her.

“I tipped the driver last night, and I tipped the guy who carried you upstairs. I used the cash, since I wasn’t sure of how to use the bank card. But they seemed happy.”

_Bank card?_

“There haven’t been banks in this country or very many others since I was a boy. And _of course_ they were happy—cash is double face value, and it’s incredibly hard to come by. Ninety-nine percent of world currency is virtual. How do you not know this? How do you not know how to use an Altcoin card?”

“I’m not from here.”

“This planet?” he scoffs, opening drawers to retrieve clean boxers, socks, and a fresh t-shirt.

“Something like that.”

His head is still pounding, and he's running up against a shitload more questions than he is answers. His annoyance spikes. “Well, I’m about to drop this towel, my alien friend, so avert your eyes—unless you’re here to study humankind. In which case, look your fill. And, for the record, anatomically, I’m above average for the species.”

She drops her eyes just in time, and he takes a little savage delight in the beet-red that stains her cheeks. When he's dressed, he crosses to the window and pulls the heavy curtains aside to look out into the dull, gray predawn. Snow is drifted at the street level in deep enough piles to make him reluctant to venture out.

Peter locates his shoes and goes to sit at the end of the bed to slip them on. As he jerks the laces in aggravation, he asks, “So, what are you? A cop?”

“FBI. I think you call it that over here, too.”

There it was again— _over here_.

“My father sent you.”

She hums noncommittally. He feels the mattress shift as she turns toward him, and her matter-of-fact voice sends pleasant prickles up the back of his neck.

“Peter, I know this might sound crazy, but you and I have met before.”

He turns to look at her. “Yeah, Princess. In ways you might blush at if I told you.”

She presses her lips into a line—a habit, he suddenly realizes, and maybe a tell. “No, I know. I, um…” She inhales deeply. “Peter, I have the dreams, too.”

He barks out a laugh. “That’s rich. Nice joke. Walter tell you to say that? I tried telling that stupid fucking shrink he sent me to that all I needed was something to stop the dreams—hypnosis, sleeping pills, _something_. But all she wanted to do was dose me up like a schizophrenic, stuff me full of brain meds the way they did when I was a kid.”

“No one told me to say anything. We share the same problem. When I sleep, I see you.”

He twists around, leans over, and catches her gaze in his. “Do we fuck?”

Her eyes widen.

“In your dreams, Olivia. Are we in bed? Do we seem like we’ve been there for _hours_? Are my fingernails marking your ass while you ride me like a state-fair pony?” He doesn't have the patience for vague euphemisms, for polite and clinical exchanges of data.

She nods, once, sharply.

He manages a strangled chuckle. “Yeah, well, sorry about that. It’s the worst edging ever, right?”

She doesn't reply, but he can see that her breath has quickened.

“You know how this is happening? How to make it stop?” He stands, looking down at her.

She nods again. “Walter knows how.”

“There’s no way I’m going anywhere near my father ever again.”

She stands as well, smoothing her palms down the front of her jeans. Her small smile—that same enigmatic tilt that her lips took on in his dreams—widens into a mirthless grin. “Not your Walter, mine.”

Olivia takes a small device, something that looks like a ring box, out of the pocket of her coat. Setting it on the floor, she flips the top open and presses a button inside. Peter feels the air around him vibrate. A bright, thin line of light shoots into the air above the box and begins spinning, creating a blazing circle of gyroscopic colors.

His heart leaps into his throat. “What is that?”

She checks her watch again, and then bends to close the box, snapping it shut and returning it to her coat pocket. The gyroscope stays in place, spinning faster. She holds out her hand to him. “Come on. We don’t have much time left.”

Without thinking, he laces his fingers with hers. “Time for what?”

When she squeezes his hand, he realizes that it is the first time they’ve touched since he’s woken.

“To save both of our worlds. I’ll explain on the way.”


	4. Jumping In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olivia and Peter arrive back at the lab in our universe. Walter thinks he's discovered a solution to the interdimensional tears. Olivia finds out that Peter's more of a distraction on this side than she bargained for...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Chapter:  
> Devil, Devil by MILCK  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YJhgW06dfA

[ ](https://ibb.co/b2ZWJwL)

_Crash. Crash. Crash-crash-crash-crash!_

The sound of a half-dozen thin, glass beakers shattering on the concrete floor creates a strange kind of music in the chilly air, a cascade of tinkling notes that are both oddly beautiful and set Olivia’s teeth on edge. She would have questioned the cold, knowing that even the drafty basement had sufficient heating to chase away the chill that greets her when they materialize, but when the room comes into view, she immediately sees the reason for the arctic temperature _and_ the broken equipment.

Olivia and Peter reappear exactly where she’d jumped from—the entrance of the lab, on the threshold that sits just a few steps above the sunken interior. The prism of colored light that had surrounded them back in Peter’s hotel room fades slowly, and under the harsh white of the fluorescents, Olivia can see that a body lay on one of the long, metal tables in the center of the main floor. The requisite electrodes and wires run from here to there along the pale skin, disappearing under the sheet that covers the dead man from the waist down, and monitors at his head beep in semi-regular time. He is young, average, and aside from the exceedingly pale complexion, might have been mistaken for someone sleeping.

Walter stands at the near side of the slab, fumbling at a smaller metal side table, righting the beakers that had tipped over but not fallen like the ones in shards at his feet. Olivia tries to speak, but finds that she is momentarily unable. In fact, she can’t move, either.

_This hasn’t happened before._ She manages to flex her fingers slightly, and she looks wildly over at Walter.

“Olive!” Walter seems out of breath, though he is standing in place. His eyes are fixed on the space behind her, but his hands continue their nervous floundering, causing another glass carafe to take a tumble. “You’re back!”

_Crash._

The sound seems to break Olivia’s paralysis, but the lag from the return jump choses just that moment to hit her way harder than it had on her first trip. She lifts a hand to her forehead. “Walter. Walter, I—”

Olivia’s legs shake. The room spins. She feels her knees weaken. The edges of her vision dim fast, and before she can say more, she is headed for the ground. But she never reaches it.

A strong, bracing forearm catches her around the waist from behind, and Olivia has the presence of mind to reach up behind her and catch the back of Peter’s neck. His free hand wraps around her wrist there, his fingers sliding up to cover hers and keep her grip locked at his nape.

“I’ve got you,” he says softly, and she can only nod, taking slow, deep breaths to clear her head. His voice stays impossibly soft. “I guess it is my turn, anyway.”

As oxygen floods her and she regains her composure, she becomes _acutely_ aware of the full length of Peter Bishop’s tall, lean body pressed against the back of hers. And guilt creeps in. _Breathe deep. Breathe slow,_ she reminds herself.

An echo of the same words in Peter’s rough, hushed baritone ripples through her mind—her dreams often come back to her during the day, but this is the first time it’s happened with the man featured in them firmly curled around her.

_Breathe, baby, nice and slow. Not just yet. You can last a little longer for me, hmmm?_

Behind her, Peter stiffens and swears under his breath. “What the hell, Olivia?"

She twists to look at him, panic making her throat seize again. _Could he…when she thought…?_

Across the room, Gene _moos_ long and deep, kicking at the grating that makes up three sides of her pen.

“Is that a cow?” Peter asks.

“Walter!” Astrid’s voice comes from one of the back rooms, and she emerges with a steaming mug in hand, moving toward the elder Bishop in a careful hurry. The mug finds a place out of range of the older scientist’s shaking hands, and the petite FBI agent holds out one of her own steady palms to guide Walter from the pile of glass. “What on earth did you do?”

Walter still hasn’t taken his eyes off of Olivia, and he is completely ignoring Astrid’s offered hand. As Olivia breathes through her dizziness, Astrid follows Walter’s gaze to see Olivia and Peter’s entanglement, and her surprised expression gives way to a slow, amused—if a bit confused—smile. “Oh. Oh, _my._ Are they doing it _now,_ Walter?” Olivia sees Astrid’s head turn, and the hand that she’d offered to Walter is used to shield her eyes, instead.

Olivia is afraid of the explanation for _that_.

Peter tugs Olivia’s arm down from around his neck and dips, using his now-free arm to scoop her up from beneath the knees, his other arm sliding behind her back. “Doing _what_?” he says, his features scrunching. At least Peter’s aggravated tone isn’t reserved solely for her.

Walter rolls his eyes as he waves at the clinched pair. His reply holds a derisive edge, one that reminds Olivia of the way that Peter just spoke. “Of course not, Astral. Olivia is simply feeling the effects of the second jump. I haven’t even _told_ them what I’ve discovered.” From his trapped position, Walter wags a finger at the woman standing in front of him. “But once I do, whether they want an audience for their lovemaking or not, we will respect their decision and act accordingly.”

Embarrassed at being bride-carries down the handful of stairs that Peter manages easily, and mortified as a precursor to whatever plan Walter is about to roll out that necessitates _lovemaking_ , Olivia avoids looking at Astrid and Walter, instead looking up and meeting Peter’s eyes. She is grateful that, though his expression vacillates between annoyance and confusion, his arms remain steady.

When Peter reaches the bottom of the steps, he winks down at her, leaning close to whisper, “You could have just asked back at the hotel, sweetheart. Unless you _need_ an audience…”

The guilt gets heavier. John has been gone just over a year, and Olivia has not felt so much as a twinge of interest in anyone else. She’d even been able to set aside the dreams of Peter after they’d begun and compartmentalize them with all of the other aspects of her work. Mostly. But every time material Peter Bishop takes that low, silky timbre out of his bag of tricks, her body _reacts_.

She forces herself to remember that nothing is real with Peter. She’d read his file, and line after line had extolled his skill at manipulating people—women especially. He is charming, and handsome, and wildly intelligent, but he knows it and uses it. And despite whatever transient carnal knowledge that he _thinks_ he has of her, it is all interdimensional smoke and mirrors. And she won’t cave to it.

Her brain supplies her with a sudden image of Peter, wrapped in a damp towel, reflected in the full-length mirror hanging on the wall in his room back at the Monarch. From her vantage point at the end of the bed, she can follow the path of bare skin and lean muscles from his shoulders down to the twin dimples that sit low on his back, just above the towel. He has a few scars that she’s never seen in her dreams. There is leashed power there, in Peter’s body, and despite her self-admonishing mere moments ago, she imagines a few situations where he might unclip the lead.

She bites the inside of her lower lip.

“Huh. Works both ways. You are being a little unkind,” he explains softly. “But I’m flattered that you think I’m wildly intelligent.”

“You can put me down,” she whispers fiercely. She is still a bit lightheaded, but she needs away from him, physically.

“Whatever you need, princess.” Obligingly, Peter sets her on her feet, his hands lingering at her back and hip until she is steady.

Olivia straightens her jacket and turns her attention to Astrid, who is grinning.

“Help me out of this mess,” Walter says, agitated. He doesn’t wait, however, and instead crunches over the broken glass, weaving through the haphazard piles of scientific detritus to rush toward Peter and Olivia.

“Walter!” Astrid admonishes as he brushes past her. “The glass! You’re in slippers.”

“It’s of no consequence, my dear,” he says. “Check our patient over there. Ensure that his electrical impulses will support bodily reactions while I check Peter’s vitals. Then, we’ll forge ahead with whichever specimen is the strongest.”

Peter backpedals from beside Olivia as Walter comes at him, the ties to a tattered bathrobe flying behind the wild-haired chemist.

“Hold up. I’m not sure I want to be _examined_. I was promised an _explanation_. There was a whole spiel about the end of the world, and needing my help, and letting me in on the reason that there are _two_ Walter Bishops in the universe, which seems like a cruel joke…”

“No time to explain,” Walter says, cornering his prey and putting a hand on either side of Peter’s head, using his thumbs to pry up the younger man’s upper eyelids. “Are you on any drugs, legal or otherwise?”

Olivia sidesteps as Peter shakes loose of Walter’s grip and whirls, jogging backward several steps. “Not at the moment, but I somehow _feel_ like I’m hallucinating.”

“Walter, who’s the dead guy?” Olivia asks evenly.

“Oh, yes.” Walter’s tone brightens, and Olivia is relieved that her diversion has worked. Peter looks darkly over at her.

_Sorry. Give me time._

“This man donated his body to science,” Walter explains excitedly. “We got word from Nina just after you’d left, Olive. Precisely when I discovered the possibility that Peter might not make it back from the other side in solid form.”

“What?” Peter’s voice is far from warm and husky. In fact, it is so cold that Olivia shivers slightly.

Walter presses on. “There was no way to communicate with you once you jumped, as you likely noticed. In case Peter came to our side as something else, something noncorporeal, we decided to have a body ready to place him into. Someone recently passed, but still young enough to have a well-functioning reproductive system.”

Olivia’s dread increases. She doesn’t even have to prompt Walter to rush on with his explanation. Astrid leaves the room, which is exactly what Olivia feels like doing.

“But it appears that Peter has made it over solid and strong, so they’ll be no need for a surrogate. All the better for you, dear, because at least you’ve had a short time to get acquainted beforehand.” Walter claps his hands together and rubs them in delight. “You see, I’ve figured out what has caused the tears. And it can all be fixed by the two of you”—Walter swings his steepled hands back and forth between Olivia and Peter— “having intercourse.”

“This is the weirdest honeytrap I’ve ever heard of,” Peter quips, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks as though he might bolt for the door at any moment.

Olivia closes her eyes, willing herself not to respond right away. Then, once she is sure she can respond calmly, she speaks. “That’s not happening, Walter, so maybe explain how you comes up with that, uh, solution, and we can all brainstorm another way.”

Astrid has returned with a broom and dustpan, which she hands to Walter. “You. Sweep,” she says firmly. Then, she turns her large brown eyes on Peter and smiles. “You must feel pretty turned around. Do you want some coffee? Something to eat? An explanation of cross-dimensional energy instability and how we figured out that you two are soulmates in an alternate timeline that the universe is literally dying to get you back to?”

The deep crease appears between Peter’s eyebrows again, and his mouth opens and closes several times, as though he is struggling to find the words to reply.

Olivia blinks owlishly at her friend. Astrid slides next to her, putting an arm around Olivia as they all watch Walter dutifully sweeping up, muttering under his breath. Astrid’s sheepish smile is apologetic. “Sorry. I’ve been dealing with Walter for the past forty-eight hours, and it’s been…intense.”

“That is a lot,” Olivia admits. “Maybe coffee first. Peter?”

She looks over to see that Peter had closed his eyes, and he, too, is muttering. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

“That story is poppycock!” Walter bellows. “A tornado carrying a girl to another world. Pfft. Everyone knows it takes large amounts of carefully controlled electromagnetism and more mathematical precision than anything occurring in nature.” He dumps a full dustpan of glass forcefully into a trashcan nearby, as though to punctuate his rant.

“Coffee would be great, to start,” Peter agrees, scrubbing his hands over his face.

Astrid leads the way to the kitchenette, where Olivia knows there is both coffee and privacy for them to speak out of earshot of the still-muttering doctor. Astrid can explain whatever new information she has, and Olivia can bring Peter up to speed on the dangers they are facing.

But who will explain the ripple of Peter’s voice that whispers through Olivia’s head as they make their way? It’s low and husky, but definitely not said aloud by the man following behind her.

_Who’s John, princess?_


	5. Stuck in the Current

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lover's spat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter:  
> Five Seconds of Summer - Teeth  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLvoxKPNFbo

“And that’s why we decided to bring you over. The window was _supposed_ to show Walter the lab on the other side. But when the tears appeared, and he reassembled it to look back across, it showed us this _other_ timeline, instead. We tried sending an object over, the way we sent Oliva to your world—Walter thought it might be a third universe—but it couldn’t be done. It’s _not_ another universe. It’s this one, but with a different…” Astrid seems to be searching for a word.

“Storyline?” Olivia suggests.

“Yes, that’s a near enough description. In this other timeline, in this lab, we’re all there. Including you, Peter.” Astrid—who had corrected Peter when he’d called her Astral—looks apologetically at him.

“Except there’s no me on this side,” Peter says, recalling the bombshell that had nearly knocked the wind out of him when Olivia had dropped it. Her eyes had been way too sympathetic, and he feels strangely too sad for this other version of himself who’d never made it out of childhood. Peter’s heart—as acid-and-stone as it is—even clenches just a little for the bizarro version of his father, who's lost that other son.

“Right,” Astrid says carefully. Peter shakes his head, pushing back against the wave of sympathy that he feels radiating from her. Despite his best efforts, a few snippets of her thoughts filter through to him. Peter blames his weak mental walls on the jump, on whatever made Olivia go rubber-kneed upon their return. He'd learned long ago to build a steel fortress around his mind.

_You still have to tell him about going back and the instability._

_What if Secretary Bishop lied?_

“So, the two of you and _that_ Walter out there—which, mind _still_ blown—somehow invented and looked through a magic window into an alternate timeline where she”—Peter slices a bladed hand in Olivia’s direction, keeping his eyes trained on Astrid—“and I were together. Romantically.”

“To be clear, _we_ didn’t invent the window. Walter did, all those years ago when his Peter was sick. And you two weren’t just together romantically. You were together _epically_ ,” Astrid replies, her face dreamy as she refills her own cup, as well as another coffee mug, from the ancient percolator. She hands the second mug over to Olivia.

“This whole romance angle is new to me. Once we saw you through the window, the plan was just to bring you back and see if your physical presence in our world would correct the instability.” Olivia swings her gaze away from Peter and toward Astrid. “When did Walter come up with the bow-chicka-wow-wow method of sewing up interdimensional holes?”

Astrid bites her lower lip, and it's obvious to Peter that she's a little reluctant to say.

When Peter snorts, Astrid supplies, “The window works anywhere, so Walter had me bring it to the brownstone after you jumped, Liv. You were there, too, both of you. And we kind of watched you through the window for a while.”

Peter blanches. Astrid notices.

“Oh, no, no, no. Not _watched_ as in, watched any of your, uh, night activities. Just the boring daytime stuff.”

“We had boring daytime sex that you _did_ watch?” Peter feels the headache that he'd thought he left in Erbil begin to sneak its fingers back into the base of is skull.

Astrid pours another cup of coffee, and Peter watches her press her lips together as she turns back. “No! No boring daytime sex. I mean, you _had_ sex in the daytime, but I’m sure it wasn’t boring sex.”

“How are you sure it wasn’t boring sex if you didn’t watch?” Peter asks. “Just so I get the scientific method on this side down pat.”

“We didn’t watch any of the sex,” Astrid assures.

“I’m hearing the word _sex_ a little too much right now,” Olivia interjects.

"Walter thought physical intimacy on this side would complete the circuit, so to speak," Astrid finishes, seeming nonplussed but determined to answer Olivia's question. "It's as good a theory as any of his others on how to fix this."

Peter holds up a hand. “Okay, I get it. We were Romeo and Juliet, only of consenting age and flexing on that fact like mad bunnies, irrespective of the time of day. We kept it tender and missionary in the daylight, orchestral background, spelling out L-O-V-E in morse code with our genitals. And once the sun went down, things got full-on leather wrist cuffs and Mistress Dunham. I still don’t see what this has to do with fixing the end of the world. Or worlds. And I’m not sure what the original plan was, past my coming here to drink coffee and have this remarkably strange conversation with you two."

A thought strikes Peter, and he heaves a frustrated sigh. "Olivia, you told me back in Erbil that your Walter knew how to stop the dreams.”

“If anyone would, it would be him. Your father didn’t fill you in on what he and Walter discussed? And why would you assume that I’m the dominant?” Olivia asks, sipping her coffee.

Peter looks sideways at her. “I’m just going off of my current position in this whole dynamic, which seems to be under your boot, sweetheart. And I haven’t spoken to my father since I was eighteen, which I’m really surprised _you_ didn’t know for such a crack agent.” Peter looks over at Astrid, who's still hovering beside him with the fresh mug she’d poured. “Is that for me?”

Astrid hands the coffee over, and Peter takes a grateful sip, looking over the rim and through the steam rising from the inky depths. Olivia doesn’t look amused by him.

Peter salutes with the coffee. “Thank you, Astrid. For the coffee _and_ for not watching alternate-timeline me and the keeper of the keys here have sex.”

Astrid giggles.

Olivia lifts her chin and fixes Peter with a glare, sneering slightly. “I could see how it would benefit everyone if I gagged you, Bishop.” Her voice is saccharine but sharp.

“Who’s John, Olivia? Is he into that?”

Astrid gasps. Peter lowers his mug.

“That’s none of your business,” Olivia clips out.

The room falls into silence. Olivia, who is watching Peter with that unnerving, unwavering coolness, doesn’t speak further. Peter sets down his mug and paces back and forth across the small kitchenette, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He feels as though he is vibrating—like something in his head is going at time-and-a-half speed compared to everything around him, and if he drops his arms, he’ll fly apart into a million pieces. This is also probably residual from whatever process allowed them to pass between worlds, but on top of his lingering hangover and the fact that he hadn’t had anything to eat since lunchtime yesterday, the feeling isn’t sitting well with him.

As he tries to process everything that Astrid and Olivia have explained to him over the past thirty minutes, he avoids looking at the woman he’d just been mercilessly needling. Whatever cosmic mojo they have going on between them is pissing him off. Especially since he's now apparently supposed to be a good ‘ol fashioned set of rabbit ears for her fantasies while he's upright and wide awake. He’s had enough of her at night.

But then, he recalls the image that had burst into his head when he’d caught her mid-faint and Olivia’s fingers had curled at the back of his neck, and he waffles on whether he's sick of sharing fantasies with her or if they're something he’ll never get _enough of_. When his arm had wrapped around her, along with the immediate warmth that had spread through his veins when she’d looked up at him with those impossibly magnetic eyes, he’d gotten a crisp mental picture of the tactical blonde bent over a well-worn kitchen table. She’d been gloriously nude, moaning as Peter moved inside her from behind. His dream self must have been in a hurry, because he’d been fully clothed, aside from the necessary undone button and zipper. His head had filled with the encouragement he’d been whispering.

_Last a little longer for me._

He’d had this same dream from _his_ perspective. But the image he’d seen, the image he was pretty sure she’d _sent_ him, had been distinctly through _Olivia’s_. In all his years of being able to slip into the minds of others, he’d never met anyone who could return the favor. He is suspect as to whether Olivia even knows she can do it. If her startled expression at his reaction could be taken as any indication, she didn’t. But her irritation when he’d given her back the post-shower rear view from the Monarch told him that she wasn’t unaware of the possibility of abilities like his.

_Interesting times, these._

A crash and shout from the main lab sends Astrid out of the room. As the door quietly snicks closed behind her, Peter focuses on sorting out the flowchart of answers he’s been given so far. He’s heard a lot of crazy stories in his travels, hell, he’s _told_ a lot of crazy stories, but the one he is being fed right now takes the cake. Grudgingly, he _is_ inclined to believe the tale. How can he otherwise explain Olivia tracking him down and taking him to what seems plausibly like a parallel universe?

Olivia sets her coffee down on a small side table near her, tucks her hands into her back pockets, and leans back against the wall. “After I started having the dreams, and it was apparent that they were recurring, Walter theorized that it was a signal—that our subconscious minds were using one of the most synapse-active activities that humans can engage in—”

“Sex,” he says, just to rile her.

Her lips press into a thin, serious line.

“That the dreams were not only a clue, but a way to connect us in the extreme, stimulate our mutual awareness.”

He grins, but doesn't reply. The flash of Olivia’s eyes tell him that he is walking on very thin ice.

“When I described you, named you, Walter immediately knew the solution rested _with_ you. Then, we reassembled the window, and then, our Walter reached out to your father, and then, I came to find you. We didn’t think of much past that. But we can’t very well work together to solve anything if you’re in another world.”

Peter can't even begin to imagine the depth of the lies his father has spun. Absently, he reaches up and rubs the scar at the back of his neck, just at his hairline.

“If I agree to help you—and that’s a big _if_ , because I have yet to see these tears I keep hearing about—how long will I have to stay here? I had a few irons in the fire back on my side, things that still need taken care of.”

Olivia’s expression changes. Peter senses that the change means he isn’t about to be happy with the reply.

“That’s the thing, Peter,” Olivia says. “If you go back, there’s no guarantee that the tears won’t reappear, possibly bigger, less stable, more dangerous.”

“So?” Against his chest, he curls his hands into fists.

“You’re stuck here, Bishop.”

His brain begins to buzz.

“We’ll get you ID, a place to settle into, even a position with Fringe Division after all of this is over if you think a civilian career will be too boring after all your _mischief_ on the other side.” Though she’d been looking directly at him, she now looks away. “But, as of now, and dependent on how you behave going forward, you’re the property of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” There is nothing in her tone that suggested she gives a shit about admitting that she’s, essentially, kidnapped him.

“Fuck you,” he spits in disbelief, dry laughter bubbling out of his throat.

Olivia pushes off the wall and brushes past him. He doesn’t turn to watch her go.

“Astrid will get you some breakfast, clothes, whatever you need,” Olivia says. He hears the door open, and he can tell that she’s paused in the doorway, but he still doesn’t turn, not willing to give her the satisfaction of seeing the reaction she’s provoked.

“And if you’re thinking about running, remember—I have handcuffs.”

The door closes behind Olivia decidedly harder than Astrid had closed it moments before.


	6. A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shaky truce.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Chapter:  
> "Incomplete" by James Bay:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NsGSCPYsY

[ ](https://ibb.co/CQd0KRS)

It’s been six days since Olivia has seen him—in person or in her dreams.

Astrid fills her in morning and night each day, tells Olivia about what Peter’s requested—soap, shampoo, deodorant, a toothbrush and toothpaste (“He called it a teethbrush, Olivia,” Astrid giggles), only the most basic of clothes, and stacks and stacks of books. He reads about chemistry and physics, space and time, and the evolution of technology, glutting himself on mainstream theory and practice as well as wild, far-flung, obscure conjecture. He moves from elementary school textbooks to doctorate-level tomes with alarming speed. Then, he switches to geography, history, psychology, sociology, and pop culture. Astrid offers to get him a laptop, but she tells Olivia that he refused.

“He said he likes the smell of books,” Astrid explains, searching Olivia’s face as she does so.

Olivia thinks that Peter can’t possibly have finished all the books that cycle in and out, but when she’s at the lab late, and when she comes in early, the same light is burning in the back room where Peter has taken up residence. It’s just as well, Olivia thinks, that he also refused Broyles’s offer of an offsite apartment. There’s always someone at the lab to watch him. Olivia herself is at the lab more and more as the days stretch on.

His door stays closed, but there’s no lock on it. He doesn’t try to leave.

Everyone around the pair of them—Peter and Olivia—is walking on eggshells, selecting their words carefully, as though any one bit of off information passed from one to the other will break the dam on the fight that they all must assume is simmering.

There’s also a printout of what Peter eats and drinks, which Walter has taken to studying on a nightly basis. Peter asks for a fifth of whiskey every other day, and not much food. The morning of the fourth day, and every morning after, Walter stops Astrid on her way in to bring Peter breakfast, and Olivia has to swallow hard to keep her emotions in check as the elder Bishop gently places two gummy vitamins, four ibuprofens, and a bright-green water bottle—emblazoned with cartoon baseballs and filled with an iced concoction that he calls a “peak electrolyte mix”—on the tray beside the bagel and coffee. The vitamins are the same kind that Walter used to give young Olivia at the breakfast table every morning while Elizabeth made pancakes.

“I hope he like baseball,” Walter says cheerfully, pointing to the water bottle. “Azrael, tell me if he likes it. Tell him I can switch it to football, if he prefers.”

Astrid nods, her eyes going glossy.

“He drinks too much liquor,” Walter explains as he comes to settle on a stool next to Olivia, distracting himself with a set of slides and a nearby microscope. “When he’s ready, maybe Elizabeth will have a word with him.”

Olivia pats Walter’s hand and leaves the lab to escape the unspoken question that no one on her team will ask her.

_Why won’t you go in and talk to him?_

She’s the only one besides Walter who hasn’t spoken to Peter since the day they came back from the other side. Olivia thinks that she and Walter suffer under the same burden when it comes to Peter, but for different reasons. For Walter, Peter’s presence in their world reminds him of what he lost—and seeing a cumulative carbon copy of all those moments that he never had, even one that is hermitic and pickling himself in whiskey, must be like a knife in the gut.

For Olivia, the pain is not in the moments that she never had with Peter Bishop, but in how often, over the time since he first appeared in her dreams, she’s found other experiences—real ones—lacking. She compares every other moment she’s been in love with the way she feels when Peter’s in her head at night, when he’s touching her and whispering to her and making her feel like the universe doesn’t exist outside the pair of them. She compares the way she feels with Peter to the way she feels— _felt_ —with John Scott. And it’s wretched when she realizes that everything she thought was joy before her first dream of Peter pales in comparison to how incandescent her connection to him is.

It seems a betrayal of the love that she _knows_ she shared with John.

 _Weren’t we in love?_ she wonders, and she even hates that doubt. Olivia wants certainty to help keep the good parts of John’s memory strong, and she doesn’t want to have to explain what she and John had to Peter. It would feel too much like defending it. How would she tell Peter, who she’d just betrayed, that she’d been betrayed, as well—and still had barely blinked when she’d marooned Peter in a whole new world?

Olivia hears Astrid laughing through the door sometimes, has seen Broyles duck in to speak with Peter. Even Agent Lee has come down to deliver a thick volume of military tactical and surveillance methods, exiting the back room as wide-eyed as Astrid had been on first meeting the overwhelming force of nature that Olivia now considers Peter Bishop. No one else seems afraid of the what that force might do to the tides, but Olivia can’t let herself be pulled under right now. There’s a universe to save.

There’s an acid inside of her that is part anger and part shame. She feels guilty that she didn’t tell Peter about the instabilities, give him the chance to really decide if he wanted to follow her on the return jump. The way his eyes had burned when she’d told him that he was stuck here had frightened her, but she’d always been good about keeping her outward emotions in check. Bad, however, at keeping him out of her head.

Her anger comes from having to deal with him at all. She’s—well, they _all_ are—just as stuck in this situation as he is, and she’d asked for it about as much as Peter had, which was not at all. She’s angry that she has no answers as to how to stop what’s coming, only desperate guesses every time Walter brings back the readings from the shores of Reidan. She’s angry that Peter doesn’t seem to understand that he’s not the only one affected. And, yes, she’s angry at Peter’s silence and at his absence when she does manage the meager amount of sleep she gets.

Today is day seven.

Olivia comes in before the sun is up, planning to slip into the lab and be gone for the day before there’s any hint of the gloomy, dark sky beginning to go lighter by delicate, gray degrees. There’ll be no blue today, according to the weather, just gray, and Olivia is determined to be a ghost again when the mellow light of it chases down the stairwell to the basement. When she opens the lab door, Gene lows softly.

“Hey, girl,” Olivia whispers, hoping that Peter might still be sleeping off the effects of his whiskey. “It’s just me.”

She is three steps down and three steps into the lab when she sees him, and the sight stops her in her tracks. Peter Bishop is seated at one of the lab tables, both arms folded on the cold, steel surface, head down—completely asleep. She looks for the whiskey bottle, and it’s nowhere to be seen, but there’s an empty glass sitting on top of a haphazard stack of books on the lab table next to him.

Peter looks so different when he’s asleep. There’s no trace of careful calculation on his youthful features, no practiced intensity designed to seduce or manipulate the person he’s trained his sharklike focus on, no flickering darkness to make those summer eyes turn stormy. He looks innocent and vulnerable and…exhausted. She feels that same exhaustion, down to her bones.

Olivia takes a few steps forward, unabashedly staring at him as she clutches the book she’s brought tightly to her chest, worrying her lower lip as she considers her options. She could skirt the table, leave him sleeping, and put the book in his room for him to find later. But she worries that it would be some breach of an unspoken—if uneasy—truce if she ventured into his room.

She could lay the book on the stack that he has beside him, but she’d need to move the whiskey glass, and what if he were to wake up when sh—

“Do you have the expression, ‘Take a picture, it’ll last longer’ on this side, Princess?”

Olivia jumps, despite the fact that he doesn’t speak very loudly. Peter’s eyelashes flutter, and he opens his eyes and looks at her before sitting up slowly. He reaches back and rubs the back of his neck, something that, even in their short time together, she’s noticed he does often. “What time is it?”

She checks her watch. “Three.”

“In the morning? Are you insane? Has something happened?” He pushes his chair back and stands, hands on the edge of the lab table, as if readying himself to spring into…something.

“No, no,” she says, suddenly feeling the weight of uncertainty over what she should say to him. “Everything’s fine. I just, uh…I brought you something.”

He straightens, and she regrets wearing flats today. Even in his sock feet, their height difference makes her feel small—smaller than the guilt over how she’d tricked him. She swallows thickly, tries a smile that she hopes doesn’t look as wavering as it feels.

Those-thunder-over-the-ocean eyes drill holes into her. They are bloodshot, but still precise and electric. After a beat, he says, “A book?”

She walks the last few steps to make the lab table the only distance between them, and she holds the hardbound volume out toward him. He takes it without looking away from her, and only when she shoves both her hands in her coat pockets does he look down.

“ _Lucid Dreaming_ by William Bell. That’s…this is….” His face is a kaleidoscope of expressions, but it finally settles on confusion. “Why did you bring me this?”

“William Bell was something of a mentor. He did a lot of research into Fringe events before his passing, and I remembered this particular book a couple days ago. Thought it might help us understand what’s going on.”

“Us?” Again, that uncanny ability to knock her off her axis with a single word.

She nods. “I figured, with the books you’ve been asking for, that you might be interested.”

He runs long fingers over the leather cover, and his eyes flick back up to her. “In my world, William Bell helped my father build Massive Dynamic into a _monolithic_ evil. He didn’t write books on trippy REM travels.”

Olivia squints, frowns. “Well, here, he wasn’t evil at all. He and Walter revolutionized a lot of medical science, helped a lot of people. Bell was like an uncle to me. I was crushed when he passed away, and so were a lot of other people.”

“You’re telling me that everyone over here is benevolent and beloved?”

Olivia smirks. “No, we still have traffic cops.”

Peter’s lips twitch into the barest curve at each corner. He hefts the book in both hands, staring at her. “You look tired, ‘Liv.”

“You, too.”

They regard each other, across the lab table, for long moments. Olivia is just about to turn and leave when Peter drops the book to his side, clutched in one hand, and waves her close with the other. “Come on. You want a drink? No guarantee that I have any left, but we can split what’s there.” He grabs the empty whiskey glass and, without waiting for her answer, walks back to his room. She watches him, in his loose thermal shirt and flannel pajama pants, as he lopes through the doorway.

Olivia is frozen, mind racing as she considers the wisdom of following him. He seems entirely too casual for someone who’d been glaring daggers at her just a week ago.

“I’m not armed,” he calls from the recesses of the room.

“I’m not…that’s not what…are you doing that mind-reading thing again?”

Peter’s head pops out of the door. “No. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do it to me anymore. You’re just wound tight, that’s all. But I’m not planning any great coup. Trust me. Where could I possibly go after overthrowing the queen?”

Olivia hasn’t brought her gun. She looks over at Gene.

Gene moos and shakes her head, setting the bell on her neck clanging.

Olivia undoes the buttons of her wool coat as she enters the back room, and she throws the coat over a rolling chair that sits at a desk on one side of the bed. Considering Peter is in pajamas, she isn’t embarrassed of her joggers and college T-shirt. Peter, who is stretched out on the bed, propped up against the headboard, holds up an empty whiskey bottle, shaking it and putting on an apologetic face.

“Fresh out. Sorry. Can I offer you a warm bottled water?”

“I’ll pass,” she says, sitting down at the end of the bed. A wave of lethargy steals over her, almost drugging in its strength. She puts a hand out and smooths it over the soft, flannel comforter. She distantly hears the sound of the bottle hitting the carpeted floor with a dull _thud_.

“Have you slept at all since we got back?” he asks from behind her, and she is surprised by the gentleness of his tone.

Olivia shakes her head. “Not in any stretch that counts.”

“Me, either. The whiskey helps, but that’s more _unconscious_ than _asleep_. I figured you were sleeping, at least, what with how I haven’t seen you in my—”

Olivia spins. “You haven’t dreamt, either? In how long?”

“A week. Ever since we arrived.” His gaze bounces back-and-forth over her face. “What do you think it means?”

Olivia worries her lower lip again. “I don’t know. Honestly, I’m too tired to even think about it.” She doesn’t consider, until after she’s said it, that she is essentially admitting to him how weak and depleted she is.

“Me, too. Actually, I’m more exhausted than ever. It just hit me all of a sudden.”

“I can go. And if you don’t want the book—” She’s rising as she speaks, turning to lean over the bed and pat nervously at the comforter where she’d sat. Peter’s fingers wrap around one of her wrists, gently, and she jerks her eyes up to see him scooted down to her, bent over to catch her eyes as they fly up.

“No, stay.”

“ _What?_ ” It’s a whisper. She wonders why it sounds more like acceptance than incredulity.

“It might work. I’ll sleep on the floor, but maybe if we’re in the same room, maybe the fucking universe will let us sleep.”

She is so, so tempted. The queen-sized bed will fit both of them, and he wouldn’t _have_ to sleep on the floor…

“I’m _very_ interested in what you’re thinking right now, but I want you to know that I have no idea because I’ve sworn not to peek again unless you ask,” he says.

“Why would you want me to stay? I tricked you. I didn’t tell you you’d be stuck here, and I appealed to your sense of right and wrong when I _knew_ I was misleading you. You have every right to hate me, to hate all of us. You _could_ hurt me. I know you’re capable. In your file—”

“The file you got from my father?” he says, and he sounds more amused than Olivia expects.

“Yes.” His fingers are still around her wrist, and he’s begun to slowly rub his thumb over her pulse point.

“But you didn’t bring your gun, and you came alone.”

She stares at him, her pulse kicking up. “I didn’t, and I did.”

“Get in the bed, Olivia.” It isn’t a request.

“Only if you’ll stay in it,” she counters.

“Deal.”

He peels back her side of the comforter as she kicks off her shoes, scrambles up, and slips under. As the soft, red flannel settles over her, she sees him reach over and click off the sole bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. The only light is what filters in from the lab, and it’s diffuse enough not to interfere with the velvet black that surrounds the bed.

Olivia hears Peter draw in a deep, heavy breath, sees the vague shape of his arm come up over his eyes. “Let’s hope this works. I’m about a day away from asking your Walter if he has anything that’ll knock me out for a few days.”

“He’d be happy if you did.”

“That’s a whole ‘nother conversation, ‘Liv. Too much for bedtime.” His voice sounds drowsier.

Olivia watches the barely discernable outline of the ceiling fan make creaking rotations. “I thought, this whole time, you were just staying up reading to familiarize yourself with our world,” she admits. “I thought you were trying to learn a way out, a way to get back at us—at me, maybe.”

“I was, partly,” he says. “You can’t cage a wild dog, Olivia, and—”

“Expect him not to bite?”

“No,” he laughs. “Expect him not to try and figure out how to dismantle the cage.”

“Oh.”

The fan makes ten more rotations, and Peter’s breathing gets lower, slower. Olivia’s eyelids droop. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” she whispers. “I just want to save my home, the people I love.”

He huffs in the shadows next to her. “That’s where you and I are different, Princess.”

“You only look out for yourself?” She says it as neutrally as she can—there is no accusation, but, as she’d said, his file has him pegged.

“No,” he answers. “I’ve never had a home. And I can’t think of a soul who I love.”

She hums. “That’s sad.”

“You get used to it,” he says acidly. “Now, go to sleep.”

Olivia closes her eyes and counts the fan rotations based on sound. Ten more, fifteen. The bed beside her shifts, and she can tell that Peter has rolled to face her.

“Liv,” he whispers, almost too low for her to hear. “I would never hurt you.”

She nods in the dark, but she knows it isn’t a given that he’ll be able to see her. She hopes he assumes she’s fallen asleep.

A moment later, she feels his warm fingers curl around hers on the hand closest to him. It’s only minutes later that she is completely lost to deep, renewing sleep.


End file.
